Can you predict the victor of the 2018 CRN Channel Madness Tournament of Chiefs? Voting opens next week but you can get in on the action now by forecasting the winners and submitting your entry in our bracket contest.

"We're building out the tools they need so they can present the product and have more difficult conversations with customers about what they need rather than just about the sale," said channel VP Eric Pinto.

'Global enterprise evaluation criteria are placing less emphasis on larger providers, network scale and the availability of large numbers of provider staff to deliver customized capabilities to address site- or application-specific requirements,' the research firm notes.

Google Cloud, now a $1 billion per quarter business, is landing larger deals with the help of its channel partners. Its strengths in AI and machine learning are setting the cloud provider up for more growth as it goes head-to-head with AWS and Azure.

If everything works as planned, Perspecta in May will be the name of a huge multibillion U.S. government solution provider formed by the merger of DXC Technology's government business with Vencore and KeyPoint.

"What we're getting louder about is our software capabilities, and our monitoring and management strategy, and taking that to the cloud, and taking that to channel partners," said APC channel executive Katie Boeh.